'John school' lesson: Prostitution has victims

Monday

Dec 17, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 17, 2012 at 10:47 AM

Welcome to "john school," where some guest lecturers are former prostitutes, class discussions center on the costs of human trafficking, and the visual aids include color slides of communicable diseases. More than 150 men, mostly first-time offenders with no record of violence, have completed the program since Columbus City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr.'s office created it in 2007.

Theodore Decker, The Columbus Dispatch

Welcome to “john school,” where some guest lecturers are former prostitutes, class discussions center on the costs of human trafficking, and the visual aids include color slides of communicable diseases.

More than 150 men, mostly first-time offenders with no record of violence, have completed the program since Columbus City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr.’s office created it in 2007.

Assistant City Attorney Michael C. Allbritain runs the school three or four times year. He and his volunteer speakers give up their Saturdays, hoping that at least some of the attendees walk away with a better idea of how prostitution harms not only the active participants but entire communities.

“This program is useful and runs at little to no cost,” Allbritain said. “If we did not have this program, the john would most likely pay a small fine and then get his case expunged. “The point of this program is to educate them and let them know that this is not a victimless crime."

At the most-recent session on Dec. 8, a few of the 11 attendees acted much like they were in detention. They rolled their eyes, didn’t ask questions, and left without comment as soon as they were dismissed. One young man fought falling asleep.

Allbritain has seen these reactions before. But he’s also had students stay late to talk further and to thank him.

“It really opened my eyes to what I had considered a no-harm, no-foul kind of crime,” said one northeastern Ohio man who attended the school this year and hasn’t sought a prostitute since.

Allbritain doesn’t talk down to the attendees. He said he knows that their arrests — mostly during police prostitution sweeps — were embarrassing enough. The school is meant to get them thinking.

There is no clear path into the program and no guaranteed outcome for participating. Some men go to the school through a deal struck by their attorneys. Others are ordered to attend as part of their probation.

Speakers include police officers, former prostitutes, health officials and community activists.

At the Dec. 8 session, Sgt. Stan Latta of the Columbus vice squad said many prostitutes pose a threat to johns by carrying not only disease but also weapons such as box cutters and screwdrivers.

“Why would a prostitute carry a screwdriver?” Latta asked the johns. “They’re not going to work on your car.”

Makeda Porter, prevention services manager with Columbus Public Health, used color slides and frank comments to drive home the ugly facts about sexually transmitted diseases.

“Yeah, it looks kind of painful, right?” she asked, as attendees winced at one particularly graphic image of a gonorrhea sufferer. “Not the best after-lunch conversation, but maybe a little bit better than before lunch.”

Former prostitute Jeanette Bradley, 59, told attendees about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and the adult years she spent selling herself to feed a drug habit.

“If it opens their eyes at all, praise God,” she said afterward.

One john, who agreed to an interview if his name was not used, said he was arrested for picking up an undercover female police officer and signed up for the school to get his charge dismissed.

The man, 48 and single, has patronized prostitutes for 13 years.

“It’s a lot easier to go pick up one of them than a girl in a bar,” he said.

He said he treats the women well and has avoided disease through safe sex.

He suggested that police should spend more time fighting the drug war if they truly want to help the troubled neighborhoods that prostitutes tend to frequent.

Asked whether he would patronize prostitutes again, he hesitated, then said it was only the fear of a second arrest that gives him pause.

Allbritain routinely checks on his former students to see whether they have been re-arrested for soliciting. So far, not one has. He said that although he sees that as promising, he realizes some might have simply avoided arrest.The northeastern Ohio john said he won’t solicit prostitutes anymore.“Both the disease aspect and the safety aspect were huge to me,” the 48-year-old salesman said.

“It wasn’t judgmental,” he said of john school. “It was about understanding the situation, and I appreciated that.

“I can’t say it’s going to work for everyone,” he said. “You’re going to reach some, and that’s better than not doing it at all.”

tdecker@dispatch.com

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